Have you considered that when it comes to the reliability of this information there is little difference between information detailing their great misdeeds and information detailing the misdeeds of Hamas?

Some of the differences being that there is actually counter-coverage in Hamas’s case, including Hamas generally being better at communicating their goals, policies, and practices, along with independent journalists and sometimes literally the Israeli government contradicting hasbara. I think there is better substantiation as well of accusations against the ELN, even if a number of their actions are ones that we obviously interpret differently from the neoliberals doing the reporting.

Extortion is just another word for a tax levied by people with control or contested control of a territory. How much of the excesses are propaganda designed to turn peasants against them and how much is true is entirely impossible to judge.

When I said extortion, I wasn’t referring to taxes. I already acknowledged that the ELN taxes people and that’s fair enough. When I said “extortion,” I mean things like taking hostages for money, which of course they often justify on the basis of unpaid taxes, but it’s silly to then force other people to pay those taxes (plus whatever fines are added on) while dedicating your own manpower to making someone economically unproductive for the time that they are imprisoned.

EZLN has been losing territory to drugs traffickers with overwhelming money and resources for a while now. I suspect that in these regions it is nearly impossible to match the resources (and overwhelming violence) of the drugs traffickers without being involved. I think it’s notable that this tendency of socialist groups to dip into drugs trafficking is localised in south america and nowhere else in the world.

Since revolutionary groups are going to be recruiting a lot from criminal elements, it should be unsurprising that in a place so mutilated by drug trade as many SA countries are, that’s how they would think to solve their problems, but I don’t think that that makes them right. Look at China, for example, where opium trade (and consumption) was a huge problem. The solution of the communists was to fight drug trafficking and rehabilitate addicts, weakening the profits and influence of their enemies, gaining the support of the people, and making the labor force more productive.

I don’t agree with the assessment that the conditions are not right. I think you’re underestimating how significant the drugs cartels themselves are in preventing revolution by being utterly ruthless. Replacing them as a power is a necessary part of taking over. Getting dirty to achieve it is going to be a necessity.

How much more ruthless are you going to say they are than Japan? I don’t think such a claim could possibly be advanced.

It seems like an extremely charitable position to characterize a large part of the organization as Blanquists, revisionists who aren’t concerned with things like democratic support (this varies by region). Once you really consider things like drug trafficking, which functions here to turn the people into prey to harvest profits out of at the expense of their own well-being, the credibility of the branches engaged in such activity actually building a revolutionary movement and not just a rival gang starts to severely deteriorate. You can’t build a system with such perverse incentives on the assumption that you’ll just drop your incredibly lucrative policies and pivot to being pillars of your community once you have all the power.